Kicking It

Call it what you want—Turd Dodging, Swift Shit Surfing, Drain Danking, Brown Water Rapids—it’s all the same extreme sport, Sewer Canoeing, and it’s happening just past the U-bend of a toilet near you.

Sewer Canoeing is one of those urban extreme sports that seems to pop in and out of the public’s fickle attention on the unknowable whims of mass advertising. Almost forgotten since the poop shooting craze of ’97, Sewer Canoeing is back in the headlines due to an incident that occurred at one of the sport’s major races in Berlin. In a need to fill column inches with content that is relevant to young people and attract lucrative advertising revenue I, Charlie Mongoose, have been hanging around my local sewers looking for the story you all want to hear.

I spent the last week speaking to some of the UK’s foremost practitioners of Sewer Canoeing, names that reverberate around the subterranean labyrinths of every major city; Elise Hold, Kirsty and Kevin Kagool, Peter Suffix and Stewart Dense. These celebrities of the SC world, the fiercest and fastest riders of raw sewage in the world, are seen by many as the tippity-top of the game. They are also the only people I was able to find who would reply to my questions. I interviewed each subject separately, mostly because they refused to be in the same room as each other, but also because the smell would have been too overpowering. I asked them all the same questions and spliced their testimony together, much like the seminal oral history work, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel.

Now, in their own words, the Sewer Canoeing world opens up and we can find out what really happened at the Berlin Shit-Pipe Summer Skirmish 2025.

1. What is Sewer Canoeing?

Elise Hold: Life.

Kevin and Kirsty Kagool: You get a canoe or any sort of thing that floats a dingy, truck inner tube, some kind of barrel you prise open a manhole and get yourself down there slip in your canoe get in nice and snug and tight get a head-torch, it’s dark and then you just go for it and hope you get to the end or the centre or at least get out alive.

(Note: Kevin and Kirsty Kagool have this fucking annoying thing they do where they both talk at once and it was a nightmare trying to edit that shit. Kevin is in bold and Kirsty is in italics.)

EH: Fuck all the noise. It’s just you and the dank. And the turds.

Stewart Dense: For me, it’s about testing myself and my gear in the harshest environment you can canoe in. I use a Pyranha Firecracker 252 Down River Kayak, a half-size, half-slice thunderbolt in ice blue with a white frost design around the side, limited edition. In that thing, down there, you can feel every floater, slipping and sliding with the flotsam and jetsam, anticipating the tunnels ahead through the paddle—I use an ITIWIT 86” carbon/plastic composite paddle with ribbed spoon blades fixed with a one-piece lightweight carbon shaft. The melding of body and equipment. If I could actually be a canoe... That’s the dream.

Peter Suffix: It’s a race, pure and simple. Some will say it is just you versus the sewer. They are wrong. It’s you versus whoever the hell else is down there. If you aren’t winning, or trying to win, I am not sure why you think you deserve to be down there.

EH: Racing is fun, but that’s just the sponsorship game, which is needed when you come from nothing like me. If it wasn’t for my Domestos sponsorship I wouldn’t have made it to China in ’22. Away from the sponsors, the best times I’ve had in my life is being down there navigating by the feel of my paddle, dodging turds, flicking tampons, licking sewer juice from my lips. Pure Danking.

2. How did you discover Sewer Canoeing?

K&KK: We started out just regular canoeing canals, rivers, the open sea most weekends we were out somewhere this one weekend we were stuck the car was buggered and no rental and we were like where can we canoe? I suggested we put wheels on them, do some street canoeing and then Kirsty I remembered this documentary about Burnley I’d seen on Youtube about the flood relief tunnel they built under the main road. Worth a shot, I said. So we lugged the canoes out with a crowbar to lift the manhole cover strapped a couple of head torches on and we were a go. Pioneers so we thought we were shocked there were about ten people down there Scrapper Harris, Lincoln Log, Shrobert Yuggle and a load of other locals just whipping pipe meeting those legends of the Burnley scene that first session we were hooked absolutely hooked the smell, the sounds, the atmosphere so dank super dank.

PS: Competition. Pure and simple. Anyone down there, they are the best of the best in the canoeing world, no question. If you want to be the best, you have to ride the brown water rapids. Anything else is just practice, some bullshit distraction from the real show.

EH: Of course, it’s etched in my brain like a fucking stalagmite, or is it stalactite? Doesn’t matter. I was five years old. It was bath time. I was in there. Alone. Unsupervised. I think my dad wanted me to drown. Not consciously. Just, he wanted a dog. Anyway. I shat in the bath. I’m not embarrassed. Nothing liquid. Just this small, brown torpedo that floated there. I couldn’t get out. The walls were high. Too slippery. I spent the next hour dodging it. Just me, the water, the turd. I felt alive. In that moment, I knew. This is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

SD: I was in my open sea phase—we all go through it—buying a new life jacket, the Kru Sport 170 ADV UM with auto gas inflation, sprayhood and Wave Barrier technology to minimise the risk of secondary drowning, in carbon black with signal red piping, and the guy in the shop he said, you’re in here a lot and you have that smell, you must be big into Sewer Canoeing. I said, what smell? He apologised and swiped my card but it stuck in my head, Sewer Canoeing? I always thought those guys were twats, always encroaching. But, I kind of missed the sewers so I did a search on Ogle and found there was a local chapter in Kidderminster headed by Sethel Thesel, winner of the Birmingham Canal & Sewer Grand Slam 2016-2019. He told me that I’d have to buy a whole new set up, and I’ve been hooked on ‘moist danking’ ever since.

3. What happened at the Berlin Shit-Pipe 2025?

EH: It was fucked.

PS: I don’t think you want to go into that. No one won that day. They never recovered the bodies.

K&KK: We weren’t there competing we only heard about it not there can’t really say.

SD: I lost a lot of good gear that day. Oh, and Benedril Mahmood, Slevin Notsafast and The Quads all joined the meta-mind of Jughterynart.

PS: They didn’t join no meta-mind. They were absorbed. They died. even their bones were dissolved.

EH: It’s a whole fucking thing. You don’t want to unplug that bunghole. Trust me.

K&KK: I heard the race master was we don’t know the others are going to but we don’t have to it was Shadowy McBadlylit I don’t want to talk about this we can’t be the only ones fine, if we get expelled we won’t you can’t know that I know.

EH: It was a Shadowy McBadlylit race, but you can’t blame him. He organised it, set the route, gave us the times, put up the prize money and picked the competitors by hand, but it wasn’t his fault. Who can predict a fatberg?

PS: It was definitely his fault. I won’t do a McBadlylit race again. Unless there’s prize money. Then I’ll risk it, but I’m going full dry suit. I know that’s against the spirit of the sport, but I want to keep my skin. And my bones.

EH: Not to speak ill of the dead but The Quads had it coming. They were sisters, had this four person canoe. They invented octopushing. Which is now banned. Good riddance. They deserved being absorbed.

PS: They shouldn’t have been down there in the first place, a lot of people wanted them banned. Eight paddles? Everyone else with one? What is the point, really? You might as well have drilled a hole in your canoe the chance you had. I know I shouldn’t say this, especially on the record, but good riddance. Benedril and Slevin, that’s a different story. They were the best paddle/navigating duo the sport has ever seen.

EH: Of course they were in prime, The Quads, Benedril and Slevin, tip-to-tip, waving wakes at each other trying to get an edge. They shoot out of the slave pipe into the main tube and whammo! They hit a fatberg the size of a Diplodocus. The speeds they were pushing they just glomped right in, danked the fuck out in a second. I was behind them, I managed to hold current by wedging my paddle across the pipe, a move called ‘dropping anchor’, watched as the thing absorbed them, their skin melting like a candle under a flamethrower.

SD: That’s Jughterynart, the fatberg that resides under Berlin. It doesn’t usually move beyond the Cathedral of Bones in the Berlin sewer system, but somehow it was there, smack in the middle of the race. Have you reached out to the Berlin chapter of the Minions of the Most Moist?

K&KK: McBadlylit is a mysterious bastard organises good events mysterious motives, personally I think this is being printed we need to tell this why us? Who else? Someone else Stewart Dense? Not Stewart he used to be one Elise will say, she doesn’t give a shit.

EH: Sure, I don’t give a shit. A lot of the community have this thing with Shadowy because he never shows his face, communicates through code and is always saying ominous things like, “May the sky split open to reveal the Eye of Asgoroth” or some shit like that, and there are rumours he is part of the Minions of the Most Moist. But, he’s always been nice to me. Stewart may know more, he used to be one.

SD: They said that? Bastards. But, yeah. It’s true. I used to be part of the MMM. Part of the Newcastle chapter, The Dirt Hoods. We mainly feed Leneltimptabrivt, the fatberg lodged deep in the Old City ruins under Arthurs Hill. Never saw Shadowy at a meeting, but the elder Cardinals are pretty secretive, they never come to the mixers.

Fatberg - Artist’s Impression:

4. Who are the Minions of the Most Moist?

PS: A bunch of sad sacks.

EH: They hate us. Simple as that. They think we’re encroaching on their territory.

K&KK: Didn’t we say ask Stewart?

SD: The MMM are a good bunch, really misunderstood. Of course, those is the SC scene have bad things to say about them. That’s natural when two groups with opposing ideologies clash over the same space.

EH: They are not a good bunch. They worship sentient fatbergs that want to absorb the entire human race, starting with us.

SD: Not the entire human race, that would be silly. But, yeah, a lot of it. Like I said, opposing ideologies.

PS: A bunch of fat-worshipping simpletons. They think the fatbergs are some kind of elder gods reborn on Earth to bring about something. I don’t know, I tune it out. I don’t think their dangerous. Unhygienic? Sure. But, it’s the sewers. We’ve all got a bit of shit on us.

EH: No shit on me. I dodge turds better than anyone.

PS: Yes, even she has shit on her.

SD: Those guys are harmless, really. Trust me. They have the same energy you’d find any Sunday at a garden centre. They are hobbyists, mostly, just doing it for the sense of community. They may want to bring down the whole of civilisation and have us all absorbed to join up in the meta-mind so we can live forever in eternal dank bliss, but that’s just something to talk about, really. They aren’t motivated. It’s why I left. That, and I had all the merchandise. Once I had the ochre brown double hessian robes with the breathable waterproof lining, the real-feel second skin gauntlets and The Twice-Cursed Mask of Nyzaleth, there wasn’t much else for me to get, gear wise, so I sort of drifted onto other things, model railways, dry riser hopping, ghost diddling. I was flirting with open sea witch hunting when I was given the idea to try my hand at canoeing the sewers. To be honest, I’d missed the sewers and I wish I’d got into it sooner, there is so much gear you can buy. That, and I get to keep in touch with some of the guys when they are protesting the races. I can give you a few numbers, if you like?

MMM at prayer:

5. Did you kill The Quads, Benedril Mahmood and Slevin Notsafast?

Minion of the Most Moist 1: Dude, what is that question? Are you for real? That is... Just out of the gate like that with an accusation? Wow! Just, wow! I’ve come up here topside, worn my best robes, even spritzed myself with a little lemon juice to dampen the dank for your sensitive nostrils, and you just fly at me like that. That’s pretty aggressive.

Minion of the Most Moist 2: But, yeah. That was us.

MotMM1: They aren’t dead though. Not dead dead.

MotMM2: Absorbed, they are part of the meta-mind. It’s supposed to be quite cosy. We’ve talked to people after the absorption and they seem to having a pretty sweet time.

MotMM1: Yeah, we like get these psychics in every so often so we can have a chat, see if there is anything they need. You know, magazines, that sort of thing.

MotMM2: Just magazines.

MotMM1: They always ask for magazines. Guns and Ammo. Batang! Weekly. Modern Railway. All sorts. They don’t read them, just absorb them. I’ve offered to get them wi-fi but they prefer analogue information.

MotMM2: Hey, I have a question for you. You’ve been interviewing sewer canoers, have you met Elise Hold? She is amazing. I’ve been following her career for years. She is by far the best grey water grifter out there right now. I once saw her do a Dutch Slide for a full two hundred yards down the dankest pipe you’ve seen, turd city, one point she was forty-fiving the ceiling. At the end, she was clean as a licked plate.

MotMM1: She never stops talking about it. I’m pretty sure she’s going to swap sides any day now.

MotMM2: I have a canoe. It’s more an inflatable dinghy. I just dabble. I am super, one hundred percent devoted to Lenniesimptapbrit.

MotMM1: It’s Leneltimptabrivt.

MotMM2: Super devoted.

Two weeks after our interview, Gladiola Foliage, the real name of minion number 2, entered her first Sewer race. She placed third.

Elise Hold, Kirsty and Kevin Kagool, Stewart Dense and Peter Suffix will all be competing in the Tideway’s Tunnel Marathon in 2026, a new annual fixture in the sewer canoeing calendar organised by Shadowy McBadlylit. If you wish to sign-up you can contact Shadowy through their mysterious online portal.

The world of Sewer Canoeing, like everything we report on here at CO, is full of mysteries and cults (OJ: that isn’t an editorial decision. It’s the world we live in, Charlie). I walked away from my multiple interviews with more questions than answers. What does ‘dank’ actually mean? What is a Dutch Slide? Who is Shadowy McBadlylit? And, will The Minions of the Most Moist succeed in feeding the entire human race to sentient fatbergs that seem to reside under every major city, feeding on the discarded grease and massed psychic energy of all those people, absorbing anyone and anything that crosses their path?

I should have answered these question, but I only have so much I can do before hitting my deadline, and I’m not given much space because Oscillation says no one gives a shit about sports these days (OJ: They either watch it or don’t care. No one is reading about it. If it wasn’t for Martha you’d be out by your ear).

Until next time, stay active, stay limber and keep dodging those turds.

Canoe Corsairs (1992) - The hit film widely credited with popularising sewer canoeing and exposing the hobby to a wider audience.